The question was:
The answer:I'm curious, what is the minimum staffing level for Pilotedge? Is there going to be a time when one guy is covering all the ZLA freqs (ie like vatsim with LA center only online)? Or are you at minimum going to have one guy who works center, one all the approach sectors, and another on the towers?
The radio system works very differently to VATSIM, so even if we did have a single controller working all facilities, pilots would continue to use the real world frequencies for each phase of flight. For example, for a VFR flight from SNA to LGB on VATSIM with just LAX_CTR online, the pilot would look at the controller list, see that LAX_CTR is the only controller, dial 125.80, and that would be the end of it. He'd address the controller as "LA Center" from startup until shutdown.
Take the same flight on PilotEdge...SNA to LGB under VFR. The pilot doesn't know/care how many controllers are online, he checks his watch. If it's between 8am and 11pm PDT (1500-0600z), ATC is online. The pilot tunes the ground freq for SNA, receives his VFR departure instructions (it's a Class C airport) and taxi instructions. Pulling up to the runway, he swaps to the published tower freq. After takeoff, he's handed to the local departure frequency (if applicable), or given a frequency change. Approaching Long Beach, he swaps to the tower frequency, lands, swaps to ground and makes his way to the ramp. He's spoken to the equivalent of SNA_GND, SNA_TWR, SNA_APP, LGB_TWR, LGB_GND, all using the right freqs.
To answer your specific question, however, the answer is....we haven't decided yet. Due to initial financial constraints, it's likely to be a 2 controller minimum (with ad hoc staffing on top of that). Long term, we simply need to see what kind of traffic levels and distribution we ultimately get. I suspect the long term number is going to be approximately 5 SCHEDULED controllers per facility. Bear in mind, we also allow our controllers who aren't scheduled for that shift to plug in any time they like.
For the pilot, the number of controllers simply affects how many unique controller voices you hear, as well as what kind of roles you hear them playing. Obviously it's a sliding scale, the more controllers we have online, the more narrow the scope of their responsibility, and the more specific the calls will become that you hear on the radio.
One last thing to know is that we divide the labor among our controllers completely differently to VATSIM. If you have 3 controllers online on VATSIM, they will typically cover the center, the largest TRACON, and the most popular TWR (ie, LAX_CTR, LAX_APP, LAX_TWR). If we take our sample flight from SNA to LGB above, even in a 3 controller configuration on VATSIM, you're only going to speak to one controller in that case, LAX_APP.
On PE, with 3 controllers online, you'll hear one voice on the GND freq at SNA, another voice on TWR then another when you swap to departure. As you approach the destination (LGB) and swap to tower, the voice will change from the departure controller to another voice. Astute listeners will notice that it's the same tower controller as before
Swap to ground and the voice changes again (yes, the ground controller from SNA). As we add more controllers, we begin staffing individual towers and approach sectors or enroute sectors as needed. The beauty, though, is that it's almost entirely transparent to the pilots. They don't see any controller lists. They just dial frequencies and hear voices. Yes, we have to make some compromises because we can't staff to the same level as the real National Airspace System, but the overall pilot experience is pretty close to the real thing.